Old Amana Vegetables

LIMITED SUPPLY THIS YEAR

About our 100-year-old vegetable garden

We garden organically and no-till. When we sow seeds, we simply lay out a row of compost and sow directly into it. The easternmost part of the garden contains our seed bank. Here we have rescued vegetable varieties that were brought from Germany by the Amana people and raised in their communal kitchen gardens. My wife Wilma and I are both native Amana folks, but we left Amana when we went to college, never thinking that we would return. Upon our return in 1977, we soon discovered that these wonderful old vegetable varieties were grown only in elderly ladies’ home gardens and would disappear forever, once the ladies were gone.